


You're Any Other Man In Another Man's Clothes

by Rabenherz



Series: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes [5]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Arcade Gannon Deserves Better, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Sexual Tension, The Courier Being Not Much Better, Threats of sexual violence, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vulpes Inculta Being an Asshole, the legion being the legion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22670182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rabenherz/pseuds/Rabenherz
Summary: “You change like the seasons, Courier Six.”
Relationships: Arcade Gannon/Courier, Courier/Vulpes Inculta, Male Courier/Arcade Gannon, Male Courier/Vulpes Inculta
Series: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1628497
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	You're Any Other Man In Another Man's Clothes

The tent of the Frumentarii is dark, and full of possibilities. It feels less organised than the rest of the camp, but only because the small space is cramped full to the brim with trunks and trinkets. Long rails are bending under the weight of clothes in all different styles and sizes, from NCR uniforms to farmer’s blue and waster’s rags.

In the far corner Arthur catches sight of an old dressing table that looks like it was ripped straight out of some pre-war starlets dressing room. The mirror and half the bulbs are broken, but there is something oddly beautiful about it all the same. Perhaps it is nostalgia - the entire place reminds him of a childhood spent in the dirtiest dives in New Reno. He used to hide in Mama Weston’s wardrobe between shows, and greet him after, dressed as a fearsome mob-boss or glamorous dancer. Those days are long gone, of course, but Arthur never quite lost his taste for playing dress-up and pretend. It is no coincidence that his own wardrobe back at the Lucky 38 has a costume for any occasion. Sure, there are practical reasons; people will be much more at ease with you if you look, and dress, and sound like them, but Arthur still gets a kick out of losing himself in a different skin.

This legionary gig is no different, but he looks forward to shedding the armour for something more comfortable. He locates his own clothes in a neatly folded, freshly laundered bundle close to the dresser, just as promised, and sits down to unlace his boots.

“You change like the seasons, Courier Six.”

Startled, Arthur looks up to find Vulpes watching him with an expression like a storm cloud. He wears half of his Mr Fox disguise, but it is singed and torn, and even in the dim light of the tent it is clear that he must be exhausted. If he is injured it is not immediately apparent, but few people do ‘stoic’ like Vulpes does, and the fact that he is actually leaning against one of the tents support pillars speaks volumes for his current state. Arthur idly wonders what happened to him. 

“Didn’t think I’d get to see _you_ before I’ll head out. Tough day at the office, honey?” Arthur asks levelly, taking some mildly perverse pleasure in the sneer his endearment earns him. “Your metaphors are worse than usual. I don’t change _like_ anything; I’m just getting changed.” And so he does, unperturbedly pulling off his boots and starting to make quick work of the various clasps and straps holding the breastplate in place. “Besides, _obviously_ I’ll forgive you your transgression, since you are now, technically, speaking my boss, but I think you’ll find that it’s _Sextus_ now.”

“So I’ve heard,” Vulpes says darkly. “Which means that _technically speaking_ , I get to have you flayed for insolence.” It is almost, almost a joke. Arthur is terribly proud. “But we both know that you are no Frumentarius."

"Ceasar thinks differently."

"Ceasar is-"

"Careful now," Arthur interrupts, wagging a finger back and fro. "If you start questioning the big boss' decisions, people might start wondering where your loyalties lie."

Vulpes glares at him, and Arthur sighs.

“Whatever happened, Vulpes? We got off to such a good start." The unwieldy shoulder pads hit the floor with dull twin thuds. The breastplate soon follows. “You recruit a man into the Legion, get him all excited about being part of something greater than himself, and then you hardly want to give him the time of day.”

Vulpes crosses his arms. The gesture looks about as unnatural on him as the pre-war suit does. 

“I did not know,at the time, how well you lie.”

“Rich, coming from a spy,” Arthur says, and does not bother to turn away to shimmy out of his leather skirts. The air is warm on his naked skin, and there is something strangely compelling about how his shamelessness just seems to make Vulpes angrier. Eyes burn into his flesh like acid, and he finds himself revelling in it, widening his stance and placing his hands on his hips, only for a moment, before he laughs and starts to pull on his clothes. 

When he finally speaks again, Vulpes’ tone is steeped so deeply in disgust as to be startling. “I have seen how you parade yourself about the strip, conducting with slatterns and addicts and dissolutes. You are no man of Caesar! You quaff and fornicate to excess, and share our secrets with the NCR’s snipers. And you. _You_ areconducting yourself like a beast, spreading your legs for any who will have you. Someone like you will never be part of the Legion.” 

Arthur’s jeans hang low on his hips, still unbuttoned and unbelted. His shirt, well worn, lies open, and he knows that both he and Vulpes are pointedly aware of it. Irritation has bubbled up in him, bile bitter. He smirks, humourless. Calmly, he closes the space between them. Vulpes, to his limited credit, does not back down. 

“Ceasar cares about results,” he hisses, quiet and furious, but volume is of no concern; they are nearly breathing the same air. “I deliver results. Surprising as this may be to you, Ceasar doesn’t give a shit about whom I fuck or who falls by the wayside. What’s a few dead legionaries? What’s a few hours of pleasure? The Legion is not what you think it is. If you think Ceasar is some beacon of morality, you’re fucking delusional. Man knows what he’s about, and so do I. And I ain’t gonna let some little weasel shame me for it. You let your lot murder and rape their way across the waste and claim to have the moral highground? _Fuck you_.” 

Vulpes’ eyes are dark and pleasantly, surprisingly terrified. They have sniped at each other before, but never like this. Though they have not collided yet, this has an air of physicality about it that hangs heavily between them, and though Vulpes can be as deadly as a viper, Arthur knows that as far as pure physical strength is concerned, he more than has the upper hand. 

“And do you not make yourself a hypocrite?” asks Vulpes, strangely breathless, but does not shrink away. He lowers his gaze. 

Arthur nearly steps back in surprise. Oh, he thinks, _oh._

“Don’t give me ideas,” he chuckles bitterly. Oh, how loves and despises people like Vulpes. People who are easy and malleable. People who will kill for tyrants, and who will turn over if bested or die for nothing, and think themselves martyrs. 

“If you touch me-” snarls Vulpes. 

But Arthur does, cupping Vulpes roughly through his thin slacks, and making sure to use his other hand to twist one of Vulpes’ behind his back, eliciting a sharp groan of pain. Honestly, he isn’t even sure if Vulpes is ordinarily even attracted to men, but some people steep themselves so thickly in a cocktail of repression and bullshit that it hardly seems to matter. 

“Remove your hand, or-”

Arthur barks a laugh. Squeezes. 

“You’ll remove it for me?” Vulpes’ prick twitches beneath his fingers, and Vulpes jerks in his grasp as if to strike him, but again Arthur is quicker, and he _bites_. He catches Vulpes by the throat, sharp, and only briefly, not nearly enough to pierce skin, but enough to catch him off-guard, enough to rip a sound from him that isn’t quite a moan. Arthur takes the opportunity to twist Vulpes away from the pillar, to kick his legs out from under him and throw him to the ground like a bag of potatoes.

Swiftly, he buckles his belt and buttons his shirt. “Lucky for you that you’re wrong about me huh?” he says. 

Vulpes does not get to his feet. His hand, scraped from where he caught himself, wanders to his own throat, feeling for a mark that isn’t there. “Am I?” he asks, breathless, but surprisingly calm. “But where, Courier Six, do your loyalties lie?”

Arthur smiles. 

“Guess we’ll find out. Good Talk.” He pick up his hat, pulls it low over his eyes, and steps out into the burning Nevada afternoon.

He finds a sweating Arcade near the Colosseum, looking supremely out of place. He is clutching a book, but has clearly been too busy trying to cleanse the earth he stands on with nothing but the power of his angry glare to have made a lot of progress. 

"Look what the radroaches dragged in,” he says tightly, noticing Arthur. “Hope you have accomplished something useful.” Flippancy aside, Arcade seems genuinely pleased to see him out of his legionary armour. 

“I’m sorry that took a while.” Arthur puts an arm around Arcade’s waist, mainly because he is not quite tall enough to reach his shoulders comfortably, but also because he likes the intimacy of it. All around them are recruits and legionaries, passing and going on with their days, and very carefully not paying them any mind at all. There is some power in getting results for powerful people. "Straps everywhere. Now lets get the hell out of here.”

And so they go.

_I guess we'll find out._


End file.
